Delusion of the Contemplative Ones
by SumDumMuffin
Summary: Emerald doesn't like her leader's new girlfriend.


RWBY and all characters in RWBY are creations of Rooster Teeth and the magnificent, Monty Oum, may he rest in peace.

This fic rated 'M' for sexual themes, weird fetishes, swearing, smoking, and philosophy. However, there aren't actually any depictions of sexual activity in the fic. Just a heads up if that might be worrysome for you.

Assume this fic takes place sometime during Season 2. Ruby's personality is an alternate character interpretation, based on her theme song and some creator interviews and also just crack.

I keep writing fics that are too smart for me; I guarantee no accuracy in regards to philosophy, psychology, or boarding school meal plan logistics. Another valid interpretation is that nobody here is as smart as they think they are.

This is, perhaps, the most pretentious thing I have written, so far. (fingers crossed for hatemail). So let's make a game of it: ten internet points to the person who identifies the most references.

Originally posted on Ao3.

* * *

-OOO-

* * *

Emerald looked for a lunch table. She had long since stopped caring about the quality of the food she ate, but, she had to say, the Beacon academy cafeteria served some of the better food she'd ever stolen. Today was burgers, peas, and orange slurry, and the option of cookies for desert. And the soda/juice fountain was always in the corner, next to the cups and utensils. Emerald was determined to eat healthily, now that she had the option to, so she packed her tray with just the nutritious stuff (and maybe she'd sneak the leftovers into her bag for later.).

Emerald kept her smile up when she walked through the crowded cafeteria, but dropped it once she sat down at a circular table with hemispherical seats, next to her partner. She smiled if anyone happened to look her way, but that wasn't very often, and she preferred not to pretend while she was eating.

Mercury had already claimed a table, somehow (maybe he was first in line?), and wore his passive dim-witted look as he ate, one that belied the fact that he was actually paying close attention to his surroundings. Emerald's modus operendi was to blend, while Mercury's was to slip beneath the radar.

"So what do you think?" Mercury said as he took a sip of his soda.

Emerald pushed her bite of hamburger into the corner of her cheek. "About what?"

Merc's eyebrows flattened. "About the origin of conscious thought and whether it comes with an existential mandate or if we are born without purpose." he said, and then, slightly louder, "What do you think I mean? About that." Mercury pointed to the far end of the hall.

There was a woman, looking a little mature for her school uniform, with beautiful wavy black hair and eyes that burned like forest fires. Cinder Fall, their fearless leader.

There was also some sort of walking funerary procession in a cookie goth red-riding-hood motherfucker. The good girl, Ruby Rose, Cinder's little fucking ray of sunshine.

Right now, they were smooching. Like, on the mouth.

Emerald turned back to her food. "Ugh. You had to point them out when they were sucking face?"

Mercury smirked.

Emerald closed her eyes and flattened her mouth and took a sip of her cranberry juice. "I thought I told you I didn't want to talk about it."

"They've been dating for a month. It's not going to blow over. You're not going to be able to ignore it forever." Merc poked his food with his fork before turning to look at his partner. "What if they end up married?"

"How pessimistic."

"What? I'm just saying." Mercury spooned some peas into his most annoying face-hole. "Cinder usually moves onto another girl by now, so maybe they're soulmates. Or at least, 3-5 year marriage material."

"Shut the fuck up."

"I think talking about it would help you cope with the next 3 to 5 to infinity years of Cinder/Ruby."

Emerald opened her burger and rearranged some of the ingredients. It could stand some more ketchup, so she ripped open a packet and redid her food. "Okay, fine. You want to talk about it? Then tell me, what does Cinder see in her?"

Ruby was a decent fighter, with speed powers, but the massively unbalanced scythe she used had to be more of a liability than an asset. And, also, Ruby's steady cookie-diet had given her the kind of body that Cinder didn't usually go for. So Emerald was perplexed.

Merc cogitated. "A potential ally, maybe?"

"Ha. You mean like someone to screw over at the opportune moment."

"Figuratively?" Mercury smirked, "Or literally? Because I'm thinking the second one-"

Emerald threw ketchup onto her partner's face. Ketchup had minimal nutritional content, so it was okay to waste.

After Mercury cleaned his face and stopped giggling like some sort of tittering douchenozzle, he resumed being annoying, so Emerald had to continue her line of thought. "I mean, the big reason? She's too smiley," Em said, "Like, where's she get off being so happy all. the. time?" Emerald strangled an incorporeal neck atop her tray.

"You really want to know?" said a girl, from behind them.

Emerald and Mercury turned their heads. It was Ruby. Of course it was fucking Ruby.

Ruby deftly (but not too deftly) stepped in between them, onto the lunch bench, placing her lunch tray (which seemed to have an abundance of cookies) onto the table with an awful clatter. Emerald scootched to the side so she did not literally rub elbows with the supersonic rose-flurried fatalistic scythe-reaping goth cookie-monster that had wrung her tiny gremlin clutches around their fearless leader's heart. Ruby took a bite of her burger and turned to Emerald. She did not push the mouthful to her cheek when she talked, and bits of beef patty and bread and other stuff fell out of her mouth as she talked.

"It's simple." Ruby chewed her bite of burger. "The universe is a cruel, uncaring void, and all we are to do is keep ourselves busy until we face the nothing after death."

"Not true," Mercury gestured with his fork, with a few peas impaled on the splines, "After we die, our souls become Grimm."

"There are numerous flaws in that cosmology, actually," Emerald mumbled. She scootched a little more away from her eating mates, so that she was ninety degrees apart from Ruby at the circular table.

Ruby laughed her stupid laugh. "Haha, even better; all our work will be undone as we become the monsters we so diligently hunt." Ruby stuffed her face again. Emerald noticed, between the patty and the buns there was at least one cookie, and she had to suppress her gag reflex. Could Ruby be any grosser? "I personally enjoy the theory that Dust is our crystallized life essence. Weiss assures me that's not true, but then again," Ruby gestured, "That's exactly what she'd say if it were!"

Emerald resisted the urge to insult the funerary cookie-monster. "So what's your point?"

"That there is none." Ruby must have caught Emerald's look, because she elaborated. "No work is eternal. No victory is final. So, while we live, we have no purpose but to exist."

Emerald opened her mouth. Food fell out. She tried to reclaim the lost nutrition, and then she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. "Then why do you fight so whole-heartedly? You don't believe you're making a difference?" she asked, with what might have been genuine curiosity.

"I do not."

Emerald opened her mouth, again. She didn't really have an answer to that.

Unfortunately, this appeared to give Ruby free reign to go into some prepared speech. "Perhaps this is a world without salvation, with nothing but the endless repetition of sadness and hatred. But perhaps all it takes to make it the world worth fighting for," Ruby said, "Is to believe that it is."

Emerald blinked. "What?"

Mercury nodded like he knew what Ruby was talking about, but when the jittery petal-monster turned back to Em, Mercury shrugged and grimaced and looked to the sky.

"Well, let me put it this way," Ruby said. She opened her burger and squished another cookie into it. "Being able to see and eat and cry is something that 99.99% of the universe will never get to experience. By some accident or act of Dust, we get to experience life, so maybe that accident can form a closed loop; being alive is the purpose of being alive."

"What," Emerald said, "So you're saying life's a gift? I mean where's my receipt, huh?" Emerald chucked. Nobody else did. Emerald looked to her audience. "Get it? Receipt? Cause then you can return it."

Ruby blinked. Then she got a little defensive. "I'm not saying life's a gift-"

"Damn right it's not. There's kids starving in the streets right now. You think Dust did them a favor letting them get born?"

Emerald noticed Merc and Ruby were staring at her.

"And, like," Emerald continued, since she had the spotlight, "There's people who were born from unwanted pregnancies and live their childhoods getting yelled at by parents who never wanted them. I mean, I'd think I'd prefer to be an orphan, you know what I mean?"

Ruby's fake smile vanished for a moment. "That is truly the worst."

Emerald snorted.

Ruby refreshed her smile. "But tell me, these kids that starve, for food or affection, did they never laugh? Do they never find anything in life that would make them smile?"

Emerald recalled one time in her youth, an old lady was carrying some mincemeat pies down the streets for some sort of party or some shit, and she slipped, right in front of this sketchy house where this shut-in kept some real nasty guard dogs. It went just like one would have expected.

And hey, plus side, after she fought off the dogs, Emerald had some sweet meats to enjoy on Hallowmas eve.

Emerald smiled in spite of herself.

"See?" Ruby gestured to Emerald, like she understood what her smile meant, and that pissed Emerald off more than anything. "Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. We're all going to die. So why not smile a little, sometimes?"

"Yeah, but more often then not life is suffering and loneliness and regret. Just because some of it is smiles doesn't mean the rest of it doesn't suuuuuuuuuck." Emerald ate a spoonful of peas. "On balance, I'd say life is pretty shitty."

"Yes, this world is cruel," Ruby said, "And it is also beautiful."

Emerald blinked. "What? So the world is broken and unfix-able and we're all going to die, but the world is beautiful?" Emerald swallowed her bite of food. "How can you say that?"

"Emerald," Ruby said, putting down her food and leaning closer, "What is 'beautiful'?"

Emerald leaned back and blinked. She didn't have an answer to this either.

"Uh," Emerald said, "Like, nice things? Things that you like to look at?"

"So what would you rather look at, Emerald," Ruby pontificated, "A perfect rose, or an imperfect one? A perfect, flawless flower, or an asymmetric flora, missing petals, wilting at the edges? A paper rose, or a dying one?"

Emerald knew Ruby wanted her to pick the second rose. But Ruby also probably had a speech prepared if Emerald chose the first rose. So she tried to think of an alternative answer.

She took too long, apparently, because the scythe-wielding existential dreadnought gave another concluding aphorism whose logic escaped Emerald. "The world is not beautiful, Emerald. And so it is."

"That is literally an illogical statement." Emerald waved the air. "And let's stop beating around the bush-"

"The rose bush?" Mercury asked.

Emerald flicked some more ketchup at Mercury and then turned back to Ruby. "I don't think you answered why you're even a huntress if you don't think you can make a difference."

"Because, while I live, I choose to occupy my life with being a huntress."

"But why choose huntressing?" Emerald almost forgot to keep eating as she talked. "Why not choose a nice cushy civilian life, because you think neither make a difference but in one of them, you don't have to fight or watch people die."

Ruby spread her hands around an invisible panorama over the lunch table. "Two roads diverge, Emerald," Ruby said, "And one is strewn with hardship and is rarely taken, and perhaps one of those is the reason for the other, and one is paved with luxury and is a very popular pick, again, perhaps, one because of the other. Which one is the best route?"

Emerald knew which one she was supposed to pick. "The first one, because it makes you more special for taking it," Emerald said. "No, wait, the -second one? Because it's better paved and you'll be happier?"

"The answer is 'either one'," Ruby said, "No path is more valid than another. There is equal merit, and equal regret, to whatever you pick."

"Ooh, ooh," Mercury said, between bites. He took the time to make eye contact, for his sentence. "And the answer to which rose was the most beautiful one was, 'either one', right?"

Ruby smiled and waved a hand at Merc. "Yeah, you're exactly right."

Mercury made victory gestures.

Emerald frowned. "I don't understand-"

"That's right!" Ruby yelled loud enough that Emerald flinched. "The very notion of 'understanding' is absurd! Once you realize that the nature of life itself defies understanding, you can finally be at peace with your choices."

"So," Emerald said, "I should just stop trying to find meaning in my life?"

"Do not wage war upon the meaningless, Emerald."

"So what you're saying is," Emerald said, "I pick the path that is the best for me? But how do I determine which on is best-"

"Emerald," Ruby said, "So many people throw themselves upon the cage of the infinite horizon, searching in vain for meaning, and they hate themselves, they hate the world because there is no destination, no endpoint-" Emerald wondered if this funerary cookie-monster was getting tired of waving her arms about to illustrate her metaphors, "But you must realize that the cage of freedom is only a cage in your mind, and the tyranny of choice is only petrifying to the indecisive. In the shadow cast by the inevitably of nothingness and the knowledge of the infinite, you define for yourself what your path is, and what it means." Ruby sat back down.

The three of them thought and chewed their food for a bit. Emerald started on her second burger, while Mercury finished off his oranges. Emerald didn't care what Ruby was working on eating, but it was probably cookies.

"So whether or not you're happy with your choice is completely decoupled from what your choice is?"

"Yes. You can find beauty or ugliness in it, no matter what it is."

"But some have more beauty or ugliness."

"If you want to believe that."

Emerald blinked. "So," she said, "I feel you've made several contradictory points in this conversation."

The other girl named after a gemstone tapped her chin and pondered. "You're probably right. But you must decide for yourself which ones made sense and which didn't."

Emerald frowned. "I mean," she seemed to have caught whatever it was that made the little fucking gothic rosebud wave her arms like a Muppet when she talked. "There is no inherent meaning in life, nothing we do matters, but the world is beautiful anyway, and you can find peace and happiness if you accept that nothing means anything, but peace and happiness are just as valid as searching for meaning, which is futile, so whatever you want to do is right? But how can you find your own purpose when the world doesn't have any to give?" "

"Only if you externally define what 'purpose' is," Ruby said. "Most people find something to dedicate their lives to. Some pursue justice, some pursue immortality, some merely pursue untempered hedonism, but once you realize that nothing you do will last beyond your death, you realize that the pursuit is the important part, so it doesn't matter what the goal is."

Emerald blinked. Some horrible part of her was starting to understand, but she stamped down on that part of her psyche hard.

"And that's why I pursue Cinder," Ruby said. That was out of nowhere. Emerald almost choked on her food, but she wouldn't forgive herself for wasting a bite, so she swallowed.

Ruby smiled. And this time, Emerald saw that the smile wasn't quite right- at first, she thought it was because Ruby's smile didn't reach her eyes, but when Emerald looked harder she saw that the cookie-reaper's eyelashes closed down to her corona, that the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes tightened the skin below her temples, that her mouth curved into a crescent that made lines around the corners of her face, but it didn't seem right; like they were not the deformations of a cheerful soul, but more like the cracks upon an egg that leave the chick a stillborn.

Ruby elaborated. "Cinder lives by her own rules, while being the best she can be. She does not hide from her desires, or her talent, or her pride; she means to soar higher than everyone. She doesn't care what anybody thinks, or who opposes her, or what conventions she has to rewrite."

Emerald made a face. Ruby smiled that half-sheepish, half-excited smile you get when you're conflicted about wanting to brag about something. It was the same smile Emerald saw her wearing while wearing Cinder's shirts on the mornings after the nights where Cinder would advise Merc and Em to find alternate sleeping accommodations for the evening.

Oh, and speaking of Cinder, here she was, probably finally finished with chatting with some of the other students. Cinder was better at playing the social game than Emerald or Mercury.

"Cinder!" Ruby exclaimed. Her usual, cheery squeaky voice now had a tinge of hopelessness. Or, Emerald pondered, perhaps it always had this sorrowful aftertinge and Em just never noticed; like the final note of a song you've listened to for years but only just realized had an oboe in the instrument lineup playing a minor-key counter-melody during the refrain.

Cinder held her tray out to the side so that Ruby could run up and wrap her stupid arms around Cinder's waist and press her stupid face into Cinder's chest. Cinder ran her hands along Ruby's head, tangling her long finger's in Ruby's hair before cupping the younger girl's chin to guide her into a quick smooch. Emerald coughed.

Ruby stepped back, but kept her hands on Cinder's hips.

"You know how," Ruby said, "It is up to us to define what relationships mean? To label ourselves, and to interpret just what, exactly, those labels mean to us, and what we want them to mean to others?"

Cinder nodded. "And where are you going with this?"

Ruby exhaled a soft, hot breath. "I was wondering," Ruby looked to the ground and twiddled her fingers and then clasped her hands together, tilting her head up to look Cinder in the eyes, "If I could call you 'mommy'."

Cinder, to her credit, only looked surprised for half a second. She caught the cigarette that fell out of her open mouth and tucked it behind her ear. She ran her hand through Ruby's hair. "Of course, my flower."

Ruby inhaled through her nose, as her mouth was a stupid curve clamped tight, extending to each her ears. She trembled on her toes for a moment before hugging the taller woman again, tightly, around the waist.

"Oh mommy," Ruby mumbled into Cinder's stomach.

Emerald gagged. Mercury became very interested in his peas.

Cinder patted Ruby's head again. "So since it is the burden of the individual to decide what the terms they choose really mean," Cinder said, "What does a 'mommy' mean to you, my jewel?"

Ruby pulled her face back, again, but kept mostly in the hug. Basically, she was looking between Cinder's breasts. "A mommy is someone who holds me and makes me feel safe."

Cinder's sultry smirk intensified. "Sounds like I'm qualified."

"A mommy is someone who bakes cookies with me on the weekend and, even if they're burnt and the gummy bears liquefied, tells me to keep trying."

Emerald still recalled the stench. But Cinder merely chuckled, as if the memories were fond. "Well, looks like I've already met those requirements."

"A mommy is someone who teaches me how to be a woman; who rewards me when I'm good and punishes me when I'm bad."

Cinder smirked, and a blush creeped into her cheeks. She stroked Ruby's head again, but this time her hand ran all the way down Ruby's back. "You know," she said, "that 'good' and 'evil' are just labels the powerful make up to maintain their authority."

"Well," Ruby said, and she blushed and wiggled her stupid butt, just a bit, "In that case, can you show me what power is?"

Cinder shuddered, almost imperceptibly, but Emerald caught it. It annoyed her, for some reason. The next time Cinder talked, it made Emerald feel weird, "Oh, my sweetling, power is all that enhances the feeling of pleasure. And it would be mine, to demonstrate such to you."

Ruby giggled stupidly. She took a breath, and backed away from her hug, standing straight. She took two more breaths before she spoke again.

"And-" Ruby bit her lip and broke eye contact at first, "A mommy is someone who is always there for me, and who'll never abandon me." Ruby put on her stupid fucking puppy-dog eyes.

And Cinder blinked. Emerald knew this was the moment where her leader would pause, and give some sort of speech, and explain that wasn't something she could promise-

"Oh, Ruby." Cinder pulled her girlfriend into her arms. "Of course. I promise, my sweet baby girl."

Emerald blinked. Mercury froze.

Ruby teared up. "Oh, _mommy,"_ she emitted.

And they smooched again. Well, made-out, because it was several smooches and smooch-adjacent actions. Emerald turned her head away, but Ruby was exceptionally squeaky during the whole ordeal, so she was a little hard to ignore, completely.

And then Cinder set down her tray and scooped Ruby up into her arms. Ruby squeaked and blushed and did all sorts of awful bullshit romance things as Cinder carried her bridal style out of the cafeteria, to the dorm rooms.

They left most of their food uneaten.

Emerald eyed Cinder's partially eaten burger (she must have been eating while she was talking to whoever had stolen her time, earlier), and the mostly intact sea of peas on Ruby's tray. How childish.

Wasting food was a sin, so Emerald tentatively plucked Cinder's unfinished food off the tray. Some of it had touched her mouth, but that didn't count as being contaminated.

And Emerald pulled Ruby's tray towards her. The peas had touched Ruby's mouth, but Ruby's mouth had touched Cinder's, so it was probably okay. But when she went to actually eat them, Emerald found cookie crumbs amid the vegetables, so maybe it wasn't okay.

"Well," Mercury said, finishing off his burger, "Has that cleared things up for you? Why she's so happy all the time? Are you ready to welcome her to the team?"

Emerald scrunched her face to the side. She started packing up the leftover food to sneak out of the cafeteria. "From what I gathered from that conversation is that Ruby is some crazy motherfucker who fights Grimm for no reason and idolizes Cinder because she's looking for a strong maternal presence in her life."

"Really?" Mercury said, "Because what I gathered is that we should probably find some other dorm to crash at tonight, and that we're going to have to get really comfortable with incest-play."

Emerald thought about it. The likely answer was that either option was valid. Or maybe she misunderstood the whole exercise.

* * *

OMAKE:

"And WHAT EVEN THE **FUCK** , you skank-ass motherfucking oedipal-riding-hood-type douchebag shitmaggot on the scraggly asshole of the Platonic ideal of _worthlessness,"_ Emerald screamed, pointing to Ruby's burger, "What in the depths of the most unholy pallid grimscape _imaginable_ possessed you to put fucking **raspberry cheesecake cookies** on your **FUCKING HAMBURGER!?"**

Emerald's breathing slowly steadied. She sat back down. Ruby blinked.

"All knowledge is theory-laden," Ruby intoned. She ate her burger. "All perception is internal to the perceiver. In the void cast by the subjectivity of reality, I decide for myself what is digestible or not."

* * *

OMAKE 2:

"Is 'Oedipal' even the right word?" Mercury asked Emerald, "Isn't the female equivalent the 'Electra complex'?"

"No no," Ruby explained, "Which complex you have refers to the gender of the parent being lusted after. Also, 'Oedipal' has the same number of syllables and a similar assonance to 'little red', for the 'Oedipal riding hood' descriptor, so I think Em made the right call."


End file.
